Housings of the son described are designed to be installed in rooms in which the one or more cables which terminate in the housing may approach it either from above the housing (as, say, in ducts above the ceiling of the room) or from below the housing (as, say, in ducts below the room's floor). Since it is often not possible to predict in advance whether a particular housing will be installed in a room where the cable or cables to end at the housing will approach it from above or below, it has been a common practice to have housings of two different designs to meet those two contingencies. That is, past housings have commonly been either of a first design having only an upper entry way for admitting a cable approaching from above, and extending down into the housing to a free end or, alternatively, of a second design having only a lower entry way for admitting a cable approaching the housing from below and extending upwardly into the housing to a free end.
Housings of either the first design or the second design have included as a feature a cable receptor connector to which the free end of the admitted cable was mechanically coupled in order to electrically couple the cable to equipment in the housings. Such receptor connector differed, however, for the two designs in that, in housing with upper entry ways and lower entry ways, respectively, the connector from its support extended vertically upwards and downwards, respectively, in the first and second of such designs. By thus having such receptor connector point in each case more or less towards the entry of the housing through which the cable will be admitted, the free end of the cable can be coupled to the connector while avoiding or reducing to acceptable value any bend necessarily made in the cable in order to effect such coupling. In such matter, it is to be noted that a cable of the sort described is often quite stiff and cannot be flexed to have a bending radius of less than a minimum critical size without doing damage to the cable.
While the providing of housings of two different designs for receiving cables respectively overlying and underlying the housing on their approaches thereto is a scheme which is technically feasible, that way of doing things is inefficient costwise since it requires the manufacturing and keeping in stock of two different designs of housings which could be identical in design and, thus, of lesser cost per unit, if the matter of whether the cables leading thereto came from above or below the housing is a consideration which could be disregarded.